MOD PARENT UP! Absolute gold. Plus, free association *IS* the ultimate expression of democracy

Behold the ordinance of laborers which made it illegal to "entice away" other peoples employees (and also fixed waged to low levels, and required everyone under the age of 60 to work.)...

during the black plague in England in the 1300's - hardly relevant now.

Just because the government says its illegal that does not make it wrong.

And just because something is legal does not make it just.

If you hold the belief that the liberty of all people should be equal, then I believe that your morality should lead you to the conclusion that these sorts of agreements are not "wrong."

Well, the agreements are between corporations, not people - so that argument is a strawman.

To outlaw these agreements is to weigh the liberty of the worker above that of the liberty of the employer. I personally think that a discriminating application of liberty is despicable.

A corporation may have the same rights as a human, but it is not a human. The concept of a Proprietary Limited Liability Company already *is* an application of liberty that is despicable because it is absolved from the full responsibility for its actions. It's liability is limited, a person's is not.

...liberty and justice for all.

How does a corporation pledge allegience to anything not in it's corporate charter?

Free assembly is the primary expression of democracy. For you to asset that an employer with 100's of millions of dollars of resources can contrive legal agreements, collude with each other and fire people at their discretion because they exercise those rights is an admission that America is not a democracy but a corpocracy. You're suggesting as soon as ordinary people openly, legally, democratically, get together, combine resources for their mutual benefit it's your opinion that they should be un-employable. What about the companies that *do* want to do the right thing by their employees but can't because they have to compete with these unetical entities who act in secret collusion to derive profit from supressing their employees salaries?

These corporations operate in western countrys that protects them by rule of law devised by citizens. These companies don't deserve to enjoy the benefits of operating in a stable environment provided by a democracy if they are not going to pull their weight in securing the prosperity of the citizens who provide that stability. If the free market determines that the price of a good or service should increase because it's in demand then that applies to people as well. If their skills are in demand because they invested in education to develop it then why shouldn't they profit from the investment in their education free of any hidden machinations to suppress the very free market these corporations expect to profit in.

Most IT workers I know don't belong to a union because they expect companies operate by the same principles that drive a free market. Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe have created a precedence that demanded a response that no-one in IT should have ever had to seek all because they didn't want to share the prosperity of the IT industry with the people who make up the IT industry. Clear examples of corporations working to suppress the free market and upset the balance that has negated the need for unions in the IT industry for decades.

The metrics don't include failures so infrequent that they aren't expected to happen in our lifetimes. That sort of infrequent failure was precisely what I was speaking of.

That is because there are two things being discussed here. Metrics vs Modeling via Calculated Core Damage. The CCD places probability of failure on every piece of equipment and component of the installation to determine reliability.

The original research that mdsolar spoke of, may well be accurate. But I don't see his condemnation of that research (as undermining the credibility of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) based on the actual content. That's more a problem with mdsolar's point of view than with the NRC.

This report refers to such content. I surmise that mdsolar's criticizm, and indeed the report's is valid. CCD has to be "a theoretical rate for a limited class of failure modes under ideal maintenance and regulation conditions" because it isn't real life that includes human related external factors. Indeed stylized in the very way you referred.

Further, the measure of 1 reactor accident per 10,000 years of reactor operation refers to a reactor *design* and Calculated Core Damage is not an industry or world wide measure of all reactors - just a coincidence. As each reactor is different it requires a completely new CCD for each reactor. Europeans use a Probabilistic Safety Analysis to determine possibility of core damage and the English use Failure Mode Effect Analysis.

At issue is human factors, that led to Chernobyl, TMI, FUkushima, that are not modeled and have meant 3 accidents in 14,500 years of civil reactor operation. The point here is that it's valid to critique the NRC's modelling when its metrics show a contradiction. I don't see this as undermining the process of approving reactor designs, but strengthening it because it standardizes human factors into the certification processes.

The concerning issue is that the NRC's own metrics show an increase in the frequency of 'reactive inspections' - these are the real numbers. CCD, PSA and FMEA only apply to the machine as a certification mechanism. Calculating human factors is a complex endeavor.

As to your current arguments, I find them a lot better quality.

Thank you, however I have always pointed to fact in our interactions, why are these any different?

You can't make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

oh, dear you're being assholes about releasing broken software - maybe I won't then.

but Solyent Green is.

Also, for it to be a DCMA,

Sorry, DMCA. damn typo.

It's an acronym for Digital Control My Ass, so you were right the first time.

I think the real question is: How much Buss would a CAN Buss Bus if a CAN Bus can CAN Can?

No, that is not how breeders work. Breeders 'breed' plutonium as additional elements used in the core are activated and converted to plutonium - so they actually produce plutonium (as they were designed to do). You are probably thinking of burners khallow, another fast neutron reactor, a burners rate is about 20% for them *if* the materials technology is there to support there construction - which it isn't, so it creates a bigger problem than what SONGS is facing now.

Additionally PWR burnup rate is roughly .3% percent of the mass of the fuel.

Exactly. Baseload power is a function of the grid, not of any one particular type of generation.

Wind is also more scalable than nuclear as new technology can be retrofitted onto existing towers and brownfield sites. Like nuclear there are downsides that would make you want to avoid populated areas, in particular infrasound, however it is a technology worthy of further investment and development.

Well apart from the materials technology issues to make 4th generation "burner" reactors have a viable enough lifespan to avoid the very issue we are talking about with SONGS in the article, you also add much more radioactive materials to the decommissioning process, thus increasing the cost. The issue is not the type of reactor or how much fuel it can convert to fissile ash, it's the lifespan of the reactor which should be similar to the materials that it consumes.

Additionally for the fissile ash you are talking about it's not 300 years, it's more like 600 years for the first daughter product, which would also have more decay cycles and radioactive products beyond the 600 years. So it's more like making a billions of years problem into a thousands of years problem, however it is valid that it has been mined and processed - so that is a start.

If we can design reactor that last 100-1000 years instead of the 40-60 years they last now, then 4th generation reactor technology could be viable.

And Reagun repealed the order several years later.

Thanks for pointing that out and also much appreciated about not being a dick about it.

I checked my notes at home and they were about Thallium 208. I agree, I want to learn more so I can have a reasoned and measured response. Unfortunately I see the nuclear mod trolls are out in force again.

I have nothing against this type of reactor technology, in principle however I'd like to know more about it's spent fuel byproducts and operational effluents. It is important to understand that if the halflife is three minutes and it's an energetic emmiter, how many daughter product iterations does it got through before it becomes stable an what is the rate of decay? That in itself may pose an even greater threat *because* if it is continually changing just how many micro-nutrient analogues does it present to biology? I'm not going to pretend I know the answer because I am still learning myself, however at least I know that's a question to ask. Another question about a Thorium fuel cycle to uncover is are we just making a new problem. Regardless of that, we still have problems with the Uranium based cycle and they all lead back to the same thing.

The bottom line is that because this whole debate is so polarized, no one talks sense about it anymore. The irony is that if you took a rational look at both sides of the debate you would see that what the anti- and pro- nuclear lobby need is exactly the same thing.

So let's get to the bottom of this whole pro- anti- nuclear bullshit right here.

Pro-Nuclears: want to have new reactor technology developed and deployed, old reactors desposed of responsibly. Is that a fair call?

Anti-nuclear: wants no Nuclear industry at all, but if it has to be there clean it up an make it safer. Is that a fair call?

Answer: What both parties need to have *both* of their goals satisfied is a Geologically Stable Fuel Containment Facility. The original DOE, defense in depth spec. In every country that has Nuclear reactors, in granite to deal with the ground water issues and avoid relying on containment technology.

You are right to want to learn more, doing so gets rid of the ignorance that makes these discussions so vehement and ad hominem. In following the same path I've been fortunate have access to people. The thing is you have to learn not just about the reactor technology, but enrichment, mining, reactor disposal, spent fuel containment, lots of radioisotopes - their energetic properties, toxicity, the micro-nutrients they analogue that causes bio-accumulation in the food chain and what cancers they cause in humans. Then there is the poltics, funding, legislative constructs like Price-Anderson, funding arrangements in the 2005 Energy Bill (for example), it's PR machine, reports into accidents (like Chernobyl, Fukushima), NRC and regulatory operating principles, understanding their reports and the consequences of the metric they report. The effect of the IAEA interdiction orders on WHO organization publications on radiological findings. And still there is more.

It is a mammoth and absolutley awe inspiring industry and technolgy that can either wipe us out as a species or free us as a race if we respect that the danger it poses is geological in effect, requires very long term vision in science to understand and, deep wisdom to control due to human frailty.

What I've learned is though the nuclear industry has some deep structural problems that need to be addressed, I also recognise it's irresponsible for our generation to hand down a radionuclide legacy to our grandchildren's grandchildren... so I find myself ultimately balancing the inevitable, best result end consequences of the pro- and anti- nuclear debate:

Pro-Nuclear: Have the ultimate reactor reactor technology, burners (20% burnup rate on transuranics to fissile ash), In situ reactor disposal, on site fuel processing and fissile ash containment (burnt up transuranics, no more weapons grade). Terrawatt range reactor facility, chained in granite mountain, in-situ facilities disposal, resistant to from orbit attack reactor lifespan 100-1000+ years. pros=actinide decay in about 5000-30,000 years, cons=still need materials technology to advance reactor design.

Anti-Nuclear: No nuclear industry at all, all waste containd and sealed in containment forever. pros=much cheaper and probably won't require massive societal engineering as a result, cons=waste products radioactive and a threat to the environment for 25,000 years to a billion years (attempting to roughly calculate all of the daughter-lives)

Both arguments arrive at the same place all over again. On top of that Solar, Wind, Geothermal and wave power are *still* required while we figure out how to do Nuclear right. No we are not doing it right, now. This is why I support the *development* of reactor technology but object to commercial reactor technology that was scaled up to quickly to develop properly. Should we use Thorium when we have radio isotopes already mined and refined? That could provide power for the next 5000 years *if* we could get the technology right and invest in infrastructure to transport, utilise and contain it, if we can or just transport and contain it if we can't:

Pro-Nuclear: Massive intergenerational infrastructure project that will probably change the way commerce functions and radically transform society

Anti-Nuclear: massive 30-50 year infrastructure project to commission a facility to contain and infrastructure to transport the transuranics to the facility

No matter how you look at it pro- and anti- nuclear argument end in one massive engineering project that no politician on either side of the debate has the balls to put forward. In the meantime polarisation of the debate means very little happens while precious time ticks on the existing reactor stock as they, and the expertise that understands them, move from middle to old age and the frequency of incidents lead to an increased probablilty of another accident.......and still no spent fuel containment no matter what fuel cycle you talk about.

Thanks again for being cool about pointing out the correction. I hope you find some responsible nuclear advocacy in your journey through the pro- and anti- nuclear debate. If you think it's hard being pro- or anti- nuclear try being pro- AND anti- nuclear! Who knows if we can walk between the pro-'no proof possible' and the anti-'no proof neccessary' without being modded into oblivion we may even find people discussing some useful answers.